Won Ju Lim

Won Ju Lim’s work examines the dialogue between real and imaginary space as they relate to fantasy, memory, and longing. Her multimedia practice draws from sources ranging from Baroque architecture, objects of design, fantasy and science fiction films, the urban landscape of Los Angeles, the invisible and contested spaces within her own home, and in her latest body of work, the works of French writer Marcel Proust. Proust’s influence reveals itself in both Lim's artistic approach and the formal qualities of her work, evident in her interest in the peripheral, questions of dislocation and self-alienation, and the dialectics of inside and outside. Recently, Lim has expanded her practice to include filmmaking, combining various avenues of interest — in material objects and immaterial images, in cinema and literature — to a singular point of convergence.

 

Lim received her BS from Woodbury University in Burbank CA, and an MFA from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA. She is a recipient of the distinguished Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship (2024), as well as a City of Los Angeles (C.O.L.A.) artist award (2015); Tribeca Film Institute Media Arts Fellowship, conferred by the Rockefeller Foundation (2007); and Philip Morris Visual Artist Grant (2000). 

 

Lim’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Sacramento State University Galleries, CA (2023); San Jose Museum of Art, CA (2018); and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA (2015), as well as group exhibitions at venues incuding the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; St. Louis Art Museum, MO; Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, China; Vancouver Art Gallery, Canada; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH; and ZKM Museum fur Neue Kunst, Karlsruhe, Germany, among others. Her work is included in important collections that include: San Jose Museum of Art, CA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Honolulu Museum of Art, HI; Cleveland Clinic Art Program, OH; Guy and Myriam Ullens Foundation, Geneva, Switzerland; M+ Museum for Visual Culture, Hong Kong; La Coleccion Jumex, Mexico; TBA21, Austria; and the Vancouver Art Gallery, Canada.